“O God, I dare not. It is a fearsome drop.”
“Longer, I confess, than they'll give you in an hour's time, if you remain; but it may lead elsewhere.”
The boy's mouth was parched. His eyes burned in their sockets, and yet his limbs shook with cold—but not the cold of that September night.
“I'll try it,” he muttered with a gulp. Then suddenly clutching Galliard's arm, he pointed to the window.
“What ails you now?” quoth Crispin testily.
“The dawn, Sir Crispin. The dawn.”
Crispin looked, and there, like a gash in the blackness of the heavens, he beheld a streak of grey.
“Quick, Sir Crispin; there is no time to lose. The minister said he would return at daybreak.”
“Let him come,” answered Galliard grimly, as he moved towards the casement.
He gripped the lower bar with his lean, sinewy hands, and setting his knee against the masonry beneath it, he exerted the whole of his huge strength—that awful strength acquired during those years of toil as a galley-slave, which even his debaucheries had not undermined. He felt his sinews straining until it seemed that they must crack; the sweat stood out upon his brow; his breathing grew stertorous.